


lightyears

by dreamweavernyx



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Canon - Desolation of Smaug, F/M, Introspection, Slight butchering of star mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 10:17:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamweavernyx/pseuds/dreamweavernyx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, he wonders if she feels lonely, a solitary star up there in the night sky. (He can only watch her shine, burn in starlight so bright the afterimages are forever etched on his retinas.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	lightyears

**Author's Note:**

> For the lovely [lemonmintswirl](http://lemonmintswirl.tumblr.com/), who requested Kíli/Tauriel for Christmas.
> 
> The story of Altair and Vega has been adapted for Middle Earth from the original Chinese myth about [the cowherd and the weaver-girl](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qixi_Festival#Mythology).
> 
> Opening quote is adapted from the movie _Stardust_ , closing quote is from Take That's [Rule The World](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KII1ruAfvsg).
> 
> References and quotes from the Desolation of Smaug are unfortunately not verbatim, on account of me only having watched the movie once and not having a photographic memory.
> 
> This fic has its own [theme song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ihOCgdarFg).
> 
> Beta-read by the amazing [honeyogurt](http://honeyogurt.tumblr.com/).

_“Do we gaze at the stars because we are human, or are we human because we gaze at the stars?_

_…That’s a pointless question. What you should ask is: do the stars gaze back?”_

 

~

 

Kíli remembers stories about stars the best.

 

His mother loved the night sky, and when he and Fíli were younger she’d always point up at the sky and tell them about the constellations: Pisces, Taurus and Orion, Aquarius and Aquila.

 

Her favourite story by far was the story of Altair and Vega, which she’d tell to them so often that by the age of eight Kíli and Fíli could recite it from memory.

 

“Once upon a time,” she’d say, “a young dwarf met a beautiful elven girl. They fell in love instantly, but her father, who was the king of the elves, refused to let her marry him. ‘I will not let my daughter live in the caves of dwarves, away from the light of the stars,’ he said, and drove the dwarf away.

 

But the elven girl pleaded with her father, and eventually he gave in and let them be married, on the condition that the dwarf boy stayed in the elves’ kingdom and tend to their horses.

 

And so they were married, but shortly after the girl began to spend so much time with her husband that she neglected her duties as heir to the kingdom. The king was angry, and locked up the girl in the palace, not letting the dwarf boy come up from the stables to see her.”

 

“And then?” Fíli’d ask (Fíli, who always pretended like he was hearing the story for the first time, just to humour their mother).

 

“And then she died of grief and loneliness,” their mother would reply. “She died alone in that tower and went up to heaven, and when the dwarf boy learnt of her fate he cried in the stables for seven days and seven nights.

 

On the eighth day, however, the elf girl’s horse in the stable came to the dwarf boy and spoke to him. ‘If you kill me and wear my hide over your shoulders,’ he said, ‘you can fly up to heaven and find her.’ And so he did.”

 

“Did he find her?”

 

Their mother would chuckle.

 

“Yes, he did,” she said, “but because she was already dead and he was not quite dead just yet, they were separated by a river of stars. The dwarf boy could not find a way to cross the river to get to the elf girl’s side, and neither could she, so they could only look at each other from opposite sides of the river every day.

 

But the crows back here on Middle Earth, who always watched the heavens and the skies, took pity on the two of them, and on the seventh day of the seventh moon, they all flew up to heaven and formed a bridge over that river of stars, so that the dwarf boy could be reunited with his wife.”

 

“And they lived happily after?”

 

“And they lived happily after, but only for one day every year. You see, the crows only had enough energy to fly up there once a year, and the dwarf couldn’t stay on the elf girl’s side of the river permanently because it belonged to only the souls of those who had died. And so every year, on the seventh day of the seventh month, they can be reunited, and they say that if it rains that night the crows would not have been able to fly up to the heavens, and the lovers would cry because they would be apart for another year.”

 

Once, when Kíli was seven, he’d tugged at his mother’s clothes after she’d finished, and asked: “Is there a moral to the story?”

 

“I don’t quite know,” she’d said, smiling crookedly. “I don’t quite know.”

 

~

 

The first time Kíli meets Tauriel, he thinks _star_.

 

It’s the way she carries herself, cool and collected even as her companions dump his companions into individual prisons, as though she were as unruffled as starlight.

 

She catches him fiddling with the token-stone from his mother, later, and they talk. He tells her about his mother, sees the hungry longing spark in her eyes as his voice instantly warms at the topic of his family.

 

Privately, he wonders if she feels lonely. (Don’t stars feel lonely all the time, up there in the night sky all by themselves?)

 

But she tells him that stars aren’t lonely or cold, they’re what elves love and what they live for, and he tries (but fails) to understand.

 

After she walks away, he closes his fingers back around the token-stone and leans against the cell wall, and again, he thinks: _star_.

 

A single, solitary star, shining in the sky miles and miles away from him, not acknowledging (or caring, _knowing_ ) if he basks in its soft light.

 

~

 

The second time Kíli sees Tauriel is when they’re escaping from the Mirkwood kingdom, floating down the river in barrels.

 

She doesn’t look as much like a star in daylight, but then again Kíli’s more focused on getting the arrow out of his leg than on her face, so maybe that’s why.

 

He snaps the arrow off at the shaft – not a good decision, he knows, but what choice does he have when Orcs are coming at him from all directions? – and jumps for his barrel, peering out as they disappear around the bend to see Tauriel staring after them with a mix of anger and something else etched on her face.

 

Their eyes meet, just for a second, and then she’s turning away to slash through another Orc and he’s gone with the river current.

 

~

 

The third time Kíli meets Tauriel, he’s not even sure if it’s her he’s meeting, or just his imagination getting the better of him.

 

The arrow – that _thrice-damned_ arrow – had been poisoned, and he’d had to sit on the docks of Laketown and watch as his uncle left, watch as his uncle set off on a quest that they’d all grown up dreaming of, a quest he’d left his home for and had been promised for most of his life.

 

He hadn’t had much time to ruminate, though, because slow-acting poisons were vicious and he’d soon been thrust into a world of dizzying pain.

 

He screams now, again, vision going white as hellish fire burns through his body. He can vaguely feel people holding him down, vaguely hear whimpering, and then there is a scream that pierces through his veil of pain.

 

An Orc thrusts its ugly face down at him, and instinctively he shoves it away, ignoring the sharp spike of pain that shoots through him. The sudden movement may not have been a good decision, he realizes belatedly, because the burning intensifies threefold and he screams again.

 

Someone calls his name, a voice not exactly like his brother, but in his delirious haze he cannot place it.

 

He barely feels the hands lifting him, holding him down, and delves deeper into the depths of his imagination to escape the pain. He imagines a river of stars, and a figure on the other side, her back to him, a legion of birds as black as midnight flying around the two of them. He imagines catching a shooting star, holding it to his heart until the burning in his hand eclipses the burning of the poison, driving it out and away from his body.

 

He imagines _starlight_ , and it burns so bright it etches a silhouette on the back of his eyelids.

 

“Tauriel,” he rasps, involuntarily, because the silhouette is tall and slim with long smooth hair, absolutely unlike any dwarf he has ever seen, and carries herself with grace not borne to man.

 

“Lie still,” the silhouette tells him, but suddenly he remembers his dreams of shooting stars and bright fire, and thinks – _knows_ – that this can’t be real.

 

“You can’t be her,” he whispers, and sees the silhouette shift ever so slightly. “She is far, far away from me, walking in another world, cloaked in starlight.”

 

And the figure in his dreams, the one across the river of stars that he cannot hope to cross, turns around, and she wears the face of Tauriel, a silent reminder of that which he cannot have.

 

Once, when he was much younger, he’d puzzled over his mother’s story, wondered why a dwarf would fall for an elf when they were so different, living nearly in separate worlds.

 

(Now, he knows why.)

 

“Do you think,” he murmurs, as the starlight begins to fade away, “do you think she could have loved me?”

 

Before he can hear a reply, the burning stops, and he plunges into welcome darkness.

 

~

 

_you light the skies up above me_

_a star so bright, you blind me_

_don’t close your eyes, don’t fade away_

_(don’t fade away)_

_fin._


End file.
